maybe this time
by cigarettes 'n' sidewalks
Summary: things always work out her way. they have to, right?


okay, yeah, she's a little self-centered. she gets what she wants, always has, always will. she's **v i c t o r i a **_fucking_** v e g a**, after all. she's the star of hollywood arts, the muse to every underclassman songwriter, the pinnacle of what a budding superstar should be. she's even _nice_, for god's sake. she feels bad when she hurts people, regrets when she steps on someone to get what she wantsneedshastohave. but that's hollywood, right? you have to hurt a few people to make it. she knows everything is always gonna go her way.

_(or maybe not)_

\.\

she kisses her prince charming on her second day at hollywood arts. or, she's pretty sure he's prince charming, anyway. he looks the part, and plays it well.

_(it's just another role, she'll find out eventually)_

but he's already got his princess, and she won't let him go easily. whatever, she tells herself. she doesn't care/doesn't wantneedhavetohave him/they're friends/beckandjade/jadeandbeck are happy together and she won'tcan'tdoesn'twantto ruin that.

\.\

she comes back from summer vacation on sandy beaches in faraway places, tanned and ready for her junior year, and finds that prince charming has lost his princess and wantsneedshastohave (_a replacement_) her.

_(he's nothing if not a good actor- his words are sweet, and she falls into them, already seeing her perfect future laying itself under her feet)_

\.\

they spend the rest of the summer in his rv, and she would swear that she was in a fairytale.

_(it's not a castle, exactly, but sometimes she can pretend)_

\.\

school starts again and they're king and queen of their little world, and she's never been happier. this is what she was born for- everyone's eyes on her, people talking about how sweet and lovely and perfect she and beck are. it's easy. they _are_ prefect.

_(all she has to do is disregard the fact that she's lost her best friend and beck's eyes sometimes stray back to the dark girl who doesn't care anymore. it doesn't matter that they've split away from their friends, that it's just beckandtori now and that feels wrong, sometimes) _

it's worth it. really.

\.\

slowly, she starts to see him more clearly. he loses some of his gentleness when they're alone- the fingerprint bruises on her hips never fade. maybe he's less prince charming than she thought, more dark knight- he's still the hero in her tale, always. that's what she tells herself, anyway.

\.\

jade west is the wicked witch in her tale. she lurks in the background, cursing the prince so he can't forget her. no matter what she does, she can't erase every trace of jade from beck's life. when she can't sleep in his rv, she wanders, looking through his things, trying desperately to understand him a little better. he still feels like a mystery, even after months. his home still holds bits of jade, things she wishes she could destroy. there's a strip of pictures of jadeandbeck smiling and kissing from a photobooth marking a page in a beat up copy of enduring love. one of her bracelets lays untouched on his dresser, the odd hair-tie on the floor. sometimes, she thinks she can still smell jade's perfume lingering on his clothes on in his bed.

she does what she can to make herself more prevalent, leaving jackets and makeup laying around, sleeping with makeup on so her eyeliner and lipstick stains his pillowcase, doodling on his little whiteboard.

nothing erases that fact that jade was there first.

\.\

she always believed that love would make her finally feel like the star everyone tells her she is. it hasn't. she feels more lost than she can understand, more lonely than she's ever been, and hopelesshopelesshopeless.

beck holds his affection just out of her reach, making her beg for everything. she thrives on adoration, and his still belongs to someone else. he makes her feel like she's never good enough, no matter how hard she tries to please him. she thinks suddenly of andré, who never made her ask for anything.

sometimes she wonders if should have chosen the white night over prince charming.

\.\

she doesn't wonder for long.

\.\

her world comes to a screeching halt. she spends half an hour waiting for him to pick her up for school, and finally catches a ride with sinjin. _(she doesn't ask why he drove by, or why he mumbled that he was sorry when she got out of the car)_

beckandjade are standing outside of the school, screaming at each other. she catches only bits of the conversation. their voices are distorted by the blood pounding in her ears.

"_-apologized a million times-""-fucking __**vega**__!" "you don't understa-""-don't you dare-""-love you, you know-"_

and then they aren't yelling anymore. she knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she's lost whatever game she and jade have been playing since the day she started hollywood arts. jade's angryface has softened, harsh words paused for the moment.

she turns and walks away before she has to watch beck betray her trust any more.

\.\

he lies, tells her that it's not about anyone else, that they just ran their course- she understands, right? right.

_(she doesn't bother to let him know what she saw)_

\.\

people feel soverysorry for her. her old friends don't care very much. _(she expected them to come back to her, but she forgot-they were jade's friends first, and they were jade's friends now) _the freshmen boys who used to adore her flock around her again, asking for help on performances and is she going to try out for the latest playmusicalshowcasecommercial?

in short, she goes back to who she was. an adored princess without a prince, though she's more alone, now.

\.\

"_tori vega and andré harris."_

the boy she used to think was her knight in shining armor won't look at her.

\.\

they do their project. they get an a+. they aren't really friends anymore, and that kills her.

\.\

she makes him congratulatory 'we got an a plus' spicy tuna balls, left in his locker with a note written in her loopy, uneven scrawl.

'_we're still a good team, right?'_

\.\

after lunch, she finds a note shoved inside her locker, and feels like herself for the first time in months.

'_we make it shine, princess.'_

\.\

after all, she's **v i c t o r i a **_fucking_** v e g a, and things always go her way. **

* * *

><p><em>this is my first (very bad) attempt at victorious fanfic. i'm so sorry.<em>_ but review if you want and tell me your thoughts?_**  
><strong>


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